Author’s Note: Despite the darkness of its themes this solo is meant as a positive and hopeful one. I hope to create an accurate representation as well as break the stereotypes and stigmatisation that often surrounds psychiatric hospitalisation.

Without further ado—

Day One - tw: mentions of self harm

I’m going to a fucking psych ward, thought Archer Duncan.

The notion of hospitalisation clawed at him like leeches to blood. His skin crawled with phantom insects, his vision darted around him as if guns were targeting him. His gaze followed the other awaiting patients intently, as if any one of them would suddenly jump at him with a knife. He would never admit it out loud, but Archer was petrified.

Because he was just fine.

He was not sick.

Why did everyone think he was sick?

“Why are you sending me here?” He said, thoughts finally finding words as he cleared his throat and spoke. Bewilderment tinged with concern slipped into his voice, fear gripping at his hands as they trembled slightly against the fabric of his shirt. He had worn the one he liked most today — a deep green with a striped texture down his chest and back — for luck. Now he regretted that decision.

“For your own benefit,” was the crude, blunt reply he received. A severe expression tightening against her face, whitening hair drawn into a bun that allowed no wisps to escape, Ruby Crawford looked at him, eyes barely lifted, unimpressed. Uncertainty churned in him for a fraction of a second before choler rose to the surface and took the better of him. His eyes flashed a brief, furious gold in the light, brows furrowing. Who was she to dare to look at him the way she did? Who was she to decide his life?

“I thought you said you would treat me better than him,” he spat. A low blow, that was for certain, but a truthful one.

Her eyes drifted towards him, not bothering to shoot him the glare he had expected. Her tone was clipped, pointed, but voice not impatient, just slightly vexed, “As I said, for your own benefit.”

“With all due respect—” Archer began, the signature phrase slipping off his tongue, only to be pitilessly cut off. There was no mercy for him, he feared.

“None of this,” she snapped, and a tingle shot down his spine, hot and chilling all at once. “You have already been admitted, meaning if you do not proceed as asked of you, you would be forced to.” His fists clenched and unclenched while her face remained stony cold.

“You can tell your displeasure to them, Theodore.” She had always thought Archer was a ridiculous name.

“Duncan, Archer.”

He shot Crawford a glance, as if to remind her of his actual forename, before turning his gaze towards the imposing double doors and the nurse who had called out his name.

“Go.”

As if pushed forward by the command, Archer rose in a scramble, stumbling over his feet artlessly with anxiety. Thrust forward barely in control of his steps, his eyes crept up to the large, unforgiving words that lined the top of the doors: ‘Paediatric Psychiatric Ward’. A shudder ran through his body as he reread the words—he recognised each letter, yet combined, they seemed to have been in an entirely different language. The truth hit him hard in the chest. This was happening right now. This was his reality.

The nurse’s voice, monotone as he spoke, eerily devoid of emotion, grappled against the tethers of his mind. “Hello, Archer; am I correct?—” he didn’t even give him the time to nod “—Please follow me.”

Turning swiftly as his robes trailed behind him, he did not wait for Archer to catch up as he unlocked the door with a swirl of his wand and pushed it open. He halted suddenly in the claustrophobic corridor between the two doors, the walls pressing in on Archer as he almost clashed into the nurse’s stationary body. The nurse paused briefly, checking his notepad, before pushing open an unlocked door to reveal a suffocatingly small room.

As the door clicked to a cruel shut behind him, his breathing came heavily. The spirals threatened to start again.

“Please change into hospital clothing and place your own clothes to the side. We will keep them safe for you until your discharge,” the nurse said, drawing the curtains to a close behind them.

Them. His body tensed as the nurse stood, staring at him as his hands crept upwards to unbutton his shirt. His fingers stopped at the second button, lingering with uncertainty as his nails closed over his chest. Something clenched at his heart, refusing to let go, his hands refusing to move. Even though he already knew the answer, he still asked, “Are you going to watch me?”

The nurse nodded mechanically, crossing his arms. Procedures, he seemed to have informed him.

He let out a long breath, then said one word with shakiness. “Okay.”

He felt so cold and exposed. His eyes flitted away from the nurse’s gaze, too fearful of the interrogative scrutiny to meet it. A shiver ran down the course of his spine, and the blood in his veins threatened to freeze. Forcing down his body’s protests, he pushed his fingers downwards as he undid the second button, then the third, the fourth, the fifth, and the sixth—then he allowed the shirt to fall limply to the floor as he shrugged it off soullessly. Unbuckling his belt, which he cursed himself for wearing, he let his trousers do the same, the torture of uncomfortableness written all over his tensed face. There he stood, body rigid, with nowhere to place his hands.

“Show me your left arm?”

There was a long pause. Archer knew what this was about. The unhealthy coping method he had claimed to be a solace left marks he could never erase, scars not only on his skin but his heart. He had taken care to hide them with long-sleeved turtlenecks and heavy sweaters, and today, stood bare-armed, he could not help but feel invaded. As a rush of red shot up to his cheeks, he could not help but feel shame Finally, his mind managed to rummage up one half-heartedly witty reply: “I’m left-handed, actually.”

The nurse only cocked his head, expectant.

Archer stuck out his right arm, as if doing some crooked mockery of the same introduction he had extended every time, and the nurse held it with more gentleness than he expected. Wounds not quite closed still lined his skin, some roughly scabbed over while the others still threatened to open. The nurse waved his wand, “Episkey.”

“How did these scars on your arms happen?”

You know the answer; don’t make me say it. He swallowed down the choice words he wanted so desperately to spit out, and managed instead through gritted teeth, a single, hateful word: “Cutting.”

He tutted, then inspected his spell work, before finally letting go, satisfied. “If you must,” he said, “You could at least have done yourself the favour of healing them.”

His eyes dropped downwards as he continued the scrutiny. “And the ones on your legs?”

He scowled. “Trekking.”

“I see,” he said, only half believing the factual answer.

The nurse handed him a pair of disgustingly ugly hospital clothes. Begrudgingly, he unfolded the clothes and smoothed out the creases, hands not bothering to be careful with the rough fabric. Wordlessly, he pulled it onto his arms and rushed to fasten the buttons. He pulled on the pants, similarly striped, and grimaced. Without an elastic string to tie it, it felt loose on his slender waist. Everything felt wrong as it desperately tried to cling onto his protesting body, sheer willpower the only thing holding him together at this point.

Seeing that he was now adequately dressed, “Follow me,” the nurse said once more. They walked down the corridor to the set of doors, and for a brief moment Archer was hopeful enough to believe that he would be set free. Deluded, he supposed, rather than hopeful. Instead, they turned to the other side, and with a swift swish of his wand and a push, the door swung open to reveal a sight like none other Archer had seen before. Past a nurses’ station and two corridors that led to either directions was a open space of round tables and scattered sofas. Large-paned windows letting in the blinding sun tauntingly reminded him of the freedom he was ripped away from.

But this reality… it was almost an idyllic one. Welcoming, even. Apprentice healers sat grouped over the seats, patients played cards over the song and dance of conversation. Doctors delicately conversed with cases—expect they did not just see them as cases, they saw them as people, shifting between laughter and seriousness on a taut tightrope. Children his age, and some older, some younger, milled about, and from a distance, as if through another plane of existence, he could faintly hear their discussions of life, studies, history—everything that made them more than just a diagnosis on a piece of paper but human. As the light caught onto their impossibly radiant smiles, for a second Archer could almost believe they were… normal.

Yet he? He could not so easily slide into their charming conversations, win his hand at their engaging card games. He was no better than any of these people he had once deemed crazy. He was a newcomer in their churning world of perfectly chaotic harmony. He was the unfit. He was the outsider. He was the anomaly. His nurse seemed to have thought the same as he pointed him towards the other direction.

But just before his nurse could usher him in the other away, staring at him was a girl so jejune it stabbed at his heart. He was quick to glance away as the bile rose in his throat at the very thought of a patient as young. Yet the girl caught his eyes swiftly, stubbornly refusing to let him escape so easily. He swallowed, while she grinned a heart wrenchingly gap-toothed grin, and lifted a hand to wave at him.

Inexplicably, Archer found a small smile tugging at his lips, and it allowed it to bloom back, two flowers turning towards the late morning sun.

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